Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

So Acts 9:1 :

But Saul, still breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord, went to the High Priest and begged him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he should find there any followers of the Way, whether men or women, he could bring them back to Jerusalem as prisoners.

Even if the equation Paul = Simon Magus was not true (I am open to that possibility), I follow Parvus and Godfrey's view that the passages of Galatians 1 about 'Paul persecutor' are obvious proto-catholic interpolations harmonizing Acts with Galatians.

http://vridar.org/2014/12/20/paul-the-p ... rpolation/

I wrote a comment on Vridar:

this affair of ”Paul persecutor” is modestly to my eyes the strongest element of all the Pauline letters that lead me to suspect that Roger Parvus may be tremendously right about ”Paul” on the whole line

http://vridar.org/2014/12/15/paul-the-persecutor/

I allude precisely to Parvus' idea that the real Christian historical Paul was converted by Acts in a pre-Christian 'persecutor' legendary Saul-Paul.

Therefore, in keeping with that line of reasoning, if Paul was best known (perhaps only) in virtue of his letters, then we should expect with moral certainty from the author of Acts that at least when he wrote about Paul the pre-Christian persecutor, then he should at least refer in a veiled way to the historical letters that Paul wrote and for which he was known.

In other words, I'm saying that the author of Acts is more ''historical'' when he speaks of Paul in negative terms rather than the contrary, even when we have already accepted that 'Paul the persecutor' is a pure invention of proto-Catholic and anti-Marcionite propaganda.

Then note the irony:

But Saul, still breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord, went to the High Priest and begged him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he should find there any followers of the Way, whether men or women, he could bring them back to Jerusalem as prisoners.

1) The historical Paul wrote in his letters that he received divine revelation from Jesus Christ himself
2) for the proto-catholic author of Acts, the historical Paul was the enemy of the early church, as 'the apostle of the heretics and the apostle of Marcion'.
3) Thus, per 1 & 2, for the author of Acts it was not Jesus Christ who did inspire the letters that Paul wrote.
4) for the proto-Catholic author of Acts, Jesus is the true High Priest (evidence in the proto-catholic Epistle to the Hebrews).
5) therefore, in accordance with points 1, 2, 3 and 4 above, the ironic point behind Acts 9:1 is that it was the false High Priest who inspired letters for the persecutor Paul.


Therefore, Acts of Apostles is evidence that his author knew the epistles of Paul and he didn't like them.

Interesting. I wonder why the High Priest did not send Paul or anyone to clean up Jerusalem where the cult started? Even Paul asked people to give money after he converted so he could bring it the church in Jerusalem. Why didn't he cut the head off where it began?

Or maybe "The Way" and Jesus' followers and "Christians" are different cult beliefs?

If the human high priest of Jerusalem is an ironic contrappasso for the celestial High Priest (i.e. Jesus) who sent Paul the ''Persecutor'' to send letters to the Christians out of Jerusalem, then accordingly for Acts Paul did ''persecute'' the Christians insofar he converted them to his belief (by writing letters).

Spreading heresy would be equivalent to ''physical'' persecution, here.

Therefore, to reply to your question, it is expected that in Acts the ''High Priest'' did not send Paul or anyone to clean up Jerusalem where the cult started, since historically the archangel Jesus did send Paul to preach among the gentiles and only after three year, per Galatians 1, Paul went to Jerusalem.

The persecuted people by Paul/Saul had to be the Christians out of Jerusalem, in Acts, since only the Christians out of Jerusalem were really ''persecuted'' (i.e., converted) by Paul.

This says also that 'Damascus' is a symbol to mean the entire Diaspora-hellenistic world, just as Capernaum in the Gospel of Mark and in Mcn.

Only once Paul becomes Christian in Acts post Damascus' conversion, he ceases to send letters.


Note also the proto-catholic trend, in Acts, to condemn the historical Paul by making him a zealot Jew named Saul, a trend which is also at work in our proto-catholic Gospels condemning the Pharisees and scribes harder than Mcn is critical of them.

It seems like that proto-catholics want to justify the origin of Gnosticism (the hate against the God of the Jews) attacking the official Judaism even harder than actually did the same Gnostics (and proto-gnostics like Paul).

How are extradition orders from the HP the same as the Pauline letters?

DCH

The Greek text of Acts 9:1-2 opens to that possibility:

ᾐτήσατο παρ’ αὐτοῦ ἐπιστολὰς εἰς Δαμασκὸν πρὸς τὰς συναγωγάς, ὅπως ἐάν τινας εὕρῃ τῆς Ὁδοῦ ὄντας, ἄνδρας τε καὶ γυναῖκας, δεδεμένους ἀγάγῃ εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ.

The best explanation behind the legend of Paul the Pre-Christian Persecutor (if you recognize it as a legend, obviously) is that a Christian Paul did 'persecute' (in a spiritual way, i.e. by simply preaching) the members of a Christian sect, in the eyes of the latter.

It is not the first time in history that a religious enemy is converted in a physical persecutor.

The papal bull 'Exurge domine' likens Luther to "a wild boar which devastates the vineyard of the Lord."

Idem for Paul.

Therefore under that scenario, it's expected that ''extradition orders'' are really epistles, especially if they are called ἐπιστολὰς.